


Chained

by SeitaJ



Category: Original Work
Genre: Fantasy setting, Original Characters - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:47:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28116411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeitaJ/pseuds/SeitaJ
Summary: Not a fanfiction, but an original work that I made waaaaay back in 10th grade (so around 2015-ish). I never continued it because I was too shy to get feedback and didn't have any inspiration to continue it. That being said I want to work on it again eventually.I figured since I made an account I might as well post it here as a kind of rough draft and see what people thought of it.I would really appreciate feedback.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	Chained

**_ Chained _ **

Dark grey ribbons of clouds bent and rolled with the wind, bringing an ominous chill to the wasteland of Ka’ruzd. The scorching desert had been cooled almost enough to feel hospitable under the dense cloud cover.

The winds of the storm lashed at Ka’ruzd, whipping up miniature dust devils that skittered across the sandy landscape and making the trees that were blackened and dead creak and sway under the unrelenting force.

Cloud watched from one of the cliff faces above the wasteland, his short spiky hair whipping about his face. Ka’ruzd was surrounded on its western side by a range of mountains and cliffs. The mountain range separated the desolate wastelands from the lush forests, dense with foliage and life just on the other side. The cliff he’d chosen wasn’t far from where he and his friends were currently living. He would often stalk up to his vantage point on the cliff when he was upset and needed a while to himself. He didn’t want to hurt his friends in his anger.

He scowled as he surveyed the land. Though cooled, the wasteland remained bone-dry, while beyond Cloud could see the line of rainfall a few miles away outside of Ka’ruzd. He knew that even though thick clouds covered the skies and the rain was close enough that he could almost taste the life giving droplets it would not rain beyond the peaks of the mountain range His close friends Illia, a priestess in training who was around his age with long, straight, brown hair and cherry colored eyes, and Timber, a carpenter and metal worker from the northwest region of the continent, who had short, spiked black hair, tan skin and a set of scars across his left cheek, wouldn’t be able to endure under such harsh conditions. Food, water, and herbs for treating wounds were scarce and their little group was starting to run low on supplies.

The idea of his friends possibly dying because the the unfavorable climate made his emotions spiral out of control, ranging from livid rage to deep grief, for he had already lost one of his friends recently.

His gaze snapped to the side, eyes widening, towards where the next cliff extended above the flat stretch of land he was standing on. The white iris of his left eye contracted the pupil to a pinprick, showing brightly and glowing for a split second before a thick, jet black shot from the milky depths. The area of the cliff that he’d been looking at disintegrated beneath the chain as it lashed in response to Cloud’s fly-away emotions.

The chain, known as the Chain of Chlorokai, was a curse he had had since he was little. His parents had been part of the Cult of Chlorokai and had given him as an offering. Thusly he received Chlorokai’s mark in the form of the powerful weapon that now resided in his left eye.

Once the chain had dealt its damage, it snaked back into his eye. It curled around his pupil, winding up, which sent agonizing jolts through the socket of his eye. It brought him to his knees. He grit his teeth, grinding them to distract himself from the sharp pains and also to keep himself from whimpering. He considered any sound of pain, unless one was absolutely dying, a show of weakness. _’Useless chain...good for nothing and it hurts like hell…’_ He thought bitterly as he palmed his eye waiting for the pain to abate as the chain seared and settled. His other hand was clawing at the dusty soil beneath him leaving trails as it clenched at the enduring agony.

His thoughts ruminated over everything negative his chained curse had caused. They ranged from how the chain caused rampant destruction and how Cloud had little to no control over it to how the chain had cost him the life of his dear childhood friend, Tytto Sybma, a few months prior. A gentle hand on his shoulder wrenched him from his thoughts.

“Cloud…?” Illia whispered in a soft, warm voice. “I heard a crack as I was coming to fetch you...Are you okay?” She kneeled down beside him and gently guided him to turn towards her. She carefully pulled his hand away from his eye and replaced it with her own, petting over his eye and cheek in a slow, careful movement. “It’s okay to cry...were you thinking about Syb again…?”

A blue-grey and white eye met with her kind, crimson eyes and the rage slowly drained from them. He gave a small nod and sighed as he brought up his arm edging her away a little to wipe the tears from his cheeks. He hadn’t even realized that he’d been crying.

“Is…” He coughed, clearing his throat, unhappy with how his voice broke when he tried to speak. “Is something the matter? I know there isn’t food or water this high up…” Even though he was talking to her his mind was elsewhere. He could get images of Tytto Sybma on the fateful night out of his head.

Tytto Sybma had been a politician from the north. The child of a rich family who would run out to the farmlands and spend his days with Cloud when they were both younger. Cloud had been a poor abandoned child. No one had wanted the menace with the cursed chain in his eye running around their homes. Tytto Sybma had been the first person to ever accept or befriend him. Flashes of the cold night he lost him flickered across his vision, blurry at first, then sharp and crystal clear.

_Cold darkness, frantic footsteps, labored panting for breath that scorched the lungs with frost. Tytto Sybma behind him, their footsteps leaving imprints in the frosted stone-masoned pathways that bored the Imperial city that they were escaping from, along with Illia and Timber, as well as the young prince of the nation, Ignasia, and his bodyguard, Braxe. They were the last members of the group making their escape. He remembered panic so vividly that he could taste the fear and feel his insides coil and writhe in tense knots._

_A glance over his shoulders, soldiers, armed, dangerous, and in hot pursuit on the horizon of his vision. Terror rushing through his veins as another shot of adrenaline hit him. A split second that ruined his life. The chain shot forward from his eye in his fright. The wall lining the pathway, that fortified the city within, started to crumble. Tytto froze. Seconds later he was no more, hidden beneath layer after layer of dust, rocks, and brick._

The flashes stopped as Illia shook his shoulder.

“...oud…? Cloud…!” Concern creased her delicate brow and laced her voice. When she saw lucidity start to return to Cloud’s eyes, she gave a soft sigh of relief. “Now that your attention is back, I came to you with news from the prince...The young prince needs you at his bedside as soon as you can manage to return...He’s in and out of consciousness and on several occasions he’s had to be resuscitated because he’d stop breathing...When he was last awake he asked for you to come as quickly as you could.”

Cloud went from flashbacks, to reality, to ready to go within a matter of minutes. He didn’t allow any more time for talking. He pushed himself up from his kneeling position and set out towards their temporary home; A dugout at the base of the mountain. It took twenty minutes of continuous running and sliding down the steep mountainous trails before he arrived at the dugout entrance. 

Illia would follow more leisurely at her own pace since she wouldn’t be allowed into Ignasia’s chamber even if she kept up with Cloud.

Cloud pushed open the creaky door that had been made with various scrap pieces of wood. His pace hastened as he entered the small corridors of the dugout. Down the hall and to the left, past two doors and to the right, and he was at his destination. It was a small, fairly dark room, lit by a few strategically placed candles. It was only big enough to have a few people in it at any given time.

The only furniture besides the candles was a wooden frame with a dusty, old mattress resting upon its oaken legs and to the far corner of the room was a rickety, wooden chair. A young child with short, snow-white hair, soft as a dove’s downy feathers. He was flat on his back and had a blanket up to his waist and tucked neatly around his waist.

Timber had his place in the chair at the side, his shoulders tense and back straight. He had a somber expression, but only his posture gave away that he was anxious. Braxe, a tall, lean man with a pale complexion and a dark expression, kneeled next to the bed. At his full height he was about eight inches taller than Cloud. He glared at Cloud when he entered the chamber, an action that Cloud was quick to reciprocate.

“Where. Have. You. Been?!” It was a threatening snarl. It would have sent chills shooting down a normal person’s spine with the amount of hatred it held.

“I’ve been around, Braxe.” Cloud’s own voice was strained with distaste as he tried to hold his tongue. It wouldn’t do him well to be bad-mouthing the prince’s bodyguard.

“Your lord and master has been suffering for nigh on two hours; and you were _busy_ being _‘around’_?!” Braxe narrowed his eyes. In their depths was the darkest, most venomous, loathing one could imagine.

The child in bed shifted and a weak touch silenced Braxe from any further verbal assaults that he intended to spout off. A soft, lilting, but scratchy, voice soothed Braxe.

“Be silent. He is here and I’m alive and holding on. That is all that matters.” Tired, red eyes, slitted and looking as if on the verge of closing and not being able to reopen, looked around those that were standing around his bedside. His little chest heaved beneath the thin cotton-cloth shirt that wrapped around his body.

His crimson eyes, which had been, at one point in time, vivacious and clear as the purest of crystals, were now hazy and fogged. When his glazed eyes met with Cloud’s, he gave a small smile.

“I’m happy to see you back. I was-” His petite body was wracked with a wet, rattling coughing fit. It was sickly as if his lungs only had a miniscule amount of room for oxygen to fill them past the liquid filling the alveoli in his lungs. “I was wanting...to try something…” Braxe hummed and interrupted him before he could continue.

“My prince you need not strain yourself...I implore you to rest…”

Ignasia shook his head, silencing his last remaining guard, though the tumultuous movement invoked another harsh coughing fit. Once he could manage to speak without coughing further, he did so.

“That...That chain of yours...I’ve seen it...I’ve seen it crush, destroy, mutilate even, the demons of this world and bind them to your core…” There was a long, wheezing pause as Ignasia tried to breathe in deep enough that he could resume. “, but, not once have I seen you try to control it...applying it to a useful purpose...You and I both know that I will die before much longer.” He gave a small, pained smile, showing acceptance that a child his age would normally not have in such a dire situation. “This illness has slowly been eating me alive since the escape those three months ago...It has struck so fiercely because I am so far beyond the barrier that has, for generations before me, protected my family, the royal blood of this land...I’ll be brief in what I want.” He bluntly changed the subject, jarring his listeners as he so often did. “Your chain binds things, as has already been established. I want you to use it on me. An effort to stay alive, even if it be in vain, is a well worthy effort.”

The other occupants of the chamber were startled. Timber’s eyes stretched wide, puckering the scars on his cheek in a rare expression of his inner feelings. Cloud was too shocked to continue holding onto his anger at Braxe and more than too shocked to say anything in response to Ignasia’s speech. Braxe, ever faithful and with Ignasia’s best interests ever on his mind, was absolutely horrified by the suggestion.

“B-But prince! He’ll kill you! He’ll kill you in a heartbeat and not give it a second thought!” His outburst was perceived as funny by Ignasia and was received with a soft, almost cynical, giggle.

“Be silent, fool. Do you fail to understand that this will be my deathbed if some form of action isn’t taken?” That got a low hum of concern from the guard, but he bit his tongue, so as not to argue further with Ignasia for the moment. Once Braxe had went silent, he beckoned Cloud closer.

Cloud, still dumbstruck and trying to wrap his mind around the idea of his chain being able to be used to help, took a few moments to notice he was being addressed. He tentatively drew close to the bedside and leaned slightly to hear the boy’s ever diminishing voice as the sickness threatened to overcome his body. Ignasia hummed lowly examining Cloud’s left eye closely. The ink black chain shifted around his iris, as if nervous that it was being watched.

“Beautiful. Coiled like a snake readied to strike. Truly such a remarkable gift...and, like a snake from his hole, coax gently so as not to make it strike.” Ignasia cooed in a low, honeyed voice as he looked deep into the creamy depths of white, wherein the black chain-design, in its immaterial form, roiled against the blank depths.

After a few moments his body relaxed and he let out a sigh once he was done observing the Chain of Chlorokai. Each breath he took into his body and released after a few moments produced a sickly rattle from deep within his fragile chest. Cloud let out a tense sigh of his own as he tried to take Ignasia’s advice.

The chain slowly started to stretch from his eye, thin as a stroke of paint from the tip of a brush. He recoiled as it immediately made his eye irritated. After it had lengthened it started to solidify and manifest, leaving about a foot immaterialized so that it didn’t completely destroy Cloud’s eye. It was about as thick as someone’s wrist and it bobbed and swayed slightly where it floated ethereally, like a snake tasting the air to find its prey.

When the chain started to near the sickly prince, Braxe snarled and quickly circumvented the bed and blocked Ignasia’s over-protectively. The action earned him a less than pleased rattle of a sigh.

“You, woodworker, make yourself useful and restrain him.” The young prince quickly went from amused to annoyed when his orders were consecutively and persistently ignored. Timber jolted when his better addressed him, a quick straightening of his back as he snapped to attention. Upon being ordered, he hurried up to do as he was bid, pulling Braxe out of the way with more force than the other could fight against. His muscles, toned from years of heavy labor, rippled as he forced the guard into submission and held him a few feet away where he was no longer able to make a nuisance of himself. Even though he knew he couldn’t get away, Braxe continued to thrash against Timber’s iron grip.

“Now or never Cloud Choler. I’ve lost my patience.” Ignasia hissed, more than a little impatient as he felt his body trying to give out again. He wouldn’t survive another time or two of his body failing to work.

Cloud was tense as he tried to keep the chain under control. He was scared. Scared that he’d mess up. Scared that he might kill him again and lose yet another person that was close to him. That fear was his enemy as it made the chain less than respectful towards its master. It seared and scorched his eye the longer he kept it out though so he knew he needed to try and hurry before the chain blinded him.

With a tense sigh, he braced his body, relaxing his mind and trying to control the chain. It shifted sluggishly, as if deciding whether or not it should listen. It slowly gave in and moved closer to Ignasia. It slowly wrapped the boy’s throat. Because it was also partially ethereal, it wasn’t limited to just staying completely outside of the child’s body. It tightened around his throat, half sinking into the skin and resulting in pained, choking gasps.

The second Ignasia started to choke, Braxe started thrashing harder tenfold, giving Timber a beating as he struggled to escape from him.

Cloud loosed a shaky breath and edged the chain further. The skin gave way under the phantomnal chain, allowing it to enter Ignasia’s bloodstream and tissue. It took several painstaking minutes for it to dematerialize itself enough to worm its way deep beneath the delicate flesh. A shrill scream of utter agony pierced the still air of the chamber. Across Ignasia’s pale, white skin, burns started appearing where the chain was seemingly damaging him from the inside out. Blistering, angry marks appeared on the skin surface matching the shape of the chain links that were snaking throughout his body.

It writhed beneath his skin. Ignasia’s breath hitched as he felt the familiar feeling of terror well up in him as a result of being unable to breathe finally settled into him again. when the feeling did hit him, the chain, now buried within his body and still linking him to Cloud, would snaked through his veins and force his muscles to contract. Ignasia’s body was forced to breathe by the chain within him. Once it filled every ounce of Ignasia, the chain split off at the point where it truly materialized and finished its descent into Ignasia. The burns would be permanent, but so long as the chain was in him, it would forcefully keep him alive.

Cloud was panting from the effort and beyond cringing in pain as what was left of his chain returned to his eye, encircling his pupil once more, to regenerate. His whole body ached now. He groaned low in his throat as he felt a second heartbeat alongside his own. It was faint and weaker, but it was definitely there. A pain filled his chest as if something were him and each breath was like inhaling water or liquid fire, rather than oxygen. He was breathing fine, but regardless of that fact his body and mind registered that something wasn’t right and that triggered severe pain with each breath he took.

The burning remains of the chain pulsed through Ignasia’s body, linking him and Cloud, but more importantly it forced Ignasia’s chest to expand and his heart to beat, keeping him alive. The power of the chain remained quite active in Ignasia even though Cloud was no longer controlling it. With each pulse through the child, deep within his being, it forced his lungs to expand and what precious little amount of oxygen that entered his bloodstream to pump through him. The strain left the child unconscious.

Timber let the struggling guard free and Braxe was finally able to stumble to his master’s side, panicking and hyperventilating. Ignasia was limp aside from the movement of the chain through his body which prompted Braxe to grip his shoulder shaking slightly trying to rouse his prince back to consciousness. When several minutes passed without Ignasia stirring he turned on Cloud.

“You...You’ve murdered him! You and your _cursed_ chain!” It was a rageful snarl, risen from the very depths of Braxe’s being. Cloud didn’t have time to dodge a harsh punch to the jaw as Braxe lashed out at him, nearly blind with boiling anger. When he recovered as Braxe was readying to start lashing at him more, he opened his mouth to speak. He was startled to find that the voice he spoke with wasn’t his own.

“Enough, Braxe.” It was Ignasia, not broken and raspy as he had been for the past three months, but normal sounding for a child his age. “Braxe, from now on I order you to be his guard; His life is my own now. So long as he is alive and thriving, so shall my mind and body remain.”

A tense silence followed his words. Braxe had an obvious confliction of emotion. He was torn between his absolute hatred and distrust of Cloud and his undying loyalty to his master. It was several long moments before he finally bowed his head, giving in to Ignasia’s command.

“As you say, so shall be, my prince…”

**Author's Note:**

> No the Cloud in this is not Final Fantasy Cloud. lol Just clarifying that before even posting because the only people that ever read my story would ask this every time.  
> Names and character descriptions are also likely to change if I ever pick this story back up.


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